Projected GaN Device Lifetime in Real-World Applications Presented in EPC’s Phase 15 Report on GaN R

The rapid adoption of GaN devices in many diverse applications calls for continued accumulation of reliability statistics and research into the fundamental physics of failure in GaN devices, including integrated circuits (ICs).

EPC has announced the publication of its Phase-15 Reliability Report, documenting continued work using test-to-fail methodology and adding specific reliability metrics and predictions for real-world applications of GaN devices, including solar optimizers, lidar sensors, and DC-DC converters.

The rapid adoption of GaN devices in many diverse applications calls for the continued accumulation of reliability statistics and research into the fundamental physics of failure in GaN devices, including integrated circuits (ICs). It is also necessary to look for information from real-world experience that either confirms the laboratory-derived data or opens new questions about mission robustness. 

This report presents the results of testing eGaN devices to the point of failure, which provides the information to identify the intrinsic failure mechanisms of the devices. By identifying these intrinsic failure mechanisms, physics-based models that accurately project the safe operating life of a product over a more general set of operating conditions are developed. This is applied to information from real-world experience to determine mission robustness for specific applications.

This report is divided into nine sections, each dealing with a different failure mechanism or application case:

Section 1: Voltage/temperature stress on the gate
Section 2: Voltage/temperature stress on the drain
Section 3: Safe operating area (SOA)
Section 4: Short-circuit robustness testing
Section 5: Mechanical force stress testing
Section 6: Thermo-mechanical stress
Section 7: Reliability test results for long-term lidar pulse stress conditions
Section 8: Using test-to-fail methodology to accurately predict how eGaN devices can last more than 25 years in solar applications
Section 9: Applying the physics-based model to real-world DC-DC converter use cases